


a lamb among wolves

by jdphoenix



Series: a lamb [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 23:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11520003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Weeks after handing herself over to the enemy, Jemma finds herself trapped in a whole new way.





	a lamb among wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luna_ruby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_ruby/gifts).



> Luna_Ruby requested a follow-up to "a lamb for a rose" for her birthday (which was almost a week ago; I fail) and I hope this satisfies. Love you, hon! 
> 
> If you haven't read that fic yet, you should definitely read it first or you will be very confused.

In her dream, Jemma stands in the suite, staring out the west-facing windows. She would have preferred a different location—her lab or the Triskelion, before or after its bombing, she isn’t particular—but it seems her subconscious is as trapped as the rest of her.

She can feel him watching her, as he often does. Those dark eyes, so much heavier than Ward’s ever were on her, marking her every movement.

“Why do you look like him?” she asks. She asked him this. Not in the evening while the sun was setting over the distant mountains, but over breakfast two days after the trade. His answer then was infuriatingly vague, a deliberate side-stepping that only served to frighten her more. Now his answer is-

“You haven’t guessed yet?” he asks. His wet breath falls over the back of her neck, hot compared to the evening cool. His body is so close to hers, close enough she can feel his hands hovering at her elbows. If she were to lean back, just a little…

She tightens her grip on her arms. “You’re his ancestor,” she guesses.

“Wrong,” he breathes. She can see their reflections in the shadows of the mountains, broken up by streams of sunlight. He’s bent over her, closer than he’s ever been, close enough to…

“He’s a clone,” she says shakily, trying not to think of what it would feel like if he came just a little closer still. “Your people engineered him with the intention of transferring your consciousness into him when he was of age, a means of getting around your ailment, but something went wrong and he escaped.”

He chuckles darkly. “So close, my Jemma, and yet so far.”

The sun dips below the horizon and Jemma’s eyes close after it, hiding her from the dark. It’s just her, the fading burn of the sun behind her eyelids, and the heat of him at her back.

“It wasn’t Grant who escaped," he whispers, his voice seeming to fill her head. “It was you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

She gasps awake and immediately hands are on her shoulders, pushing her back down. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Jemma shakes, the fading nightmare making her heart jump and her mind sluggish. It takes her the better part of a minute to focus well enough to recognize the face above her. “Agent Amador?”

Amador’s face breaks in a wide grin. “You remember. Didn’t think you would.”

“Of course I remember you.” Amador was one of Coulson’s top agents once upon a time. Unfortunately she went missing as Hive’s forces took more and more of the planet. They presumed her dead more than a year ago.

A chill passes through Jemma. The same story could apply to many of Coulson’s top agents. And now Jemma’s one of them.

The chill drives away the last of her shock, anchoring her to the moment. She makes the effort to sit up on her own and Amador obligingly moves down what turns out to be a narrow cot in a small, dimly lit room.

“It’s not what you’re used to, I know,” Amador says, “but it’s what we’ve got.”

The room is filthy, dirt and dust and even worse things clinging to every surface. The sheets on the thin mattress are heavy with the same. “It’s wonderful.” Anything is better than the gilded cage she’s been living in the past few weeks.

She reaches out to rest her hand over Amador’s. “Are we still in the city? Is there a resistance?”

She’s wondered if there might be. From the suite, high in the tower from which Hive rules his growing measure of the world, she can see little of the city below, not enough to make out whether any of the damaged buildings are signs of new or old skirmishes.

“Yeah. There’s definitely still a resistance going out here.” Amador twists in her spot, facing the wall instead of Jemma and resting her elbows on her knees. “What does SHIELD know about us?”

“Nothing,” Jemma says. “I’m sorry.” Hive’s found some way to disrupt their communications with those trapped in the areas he’s conquered. She has yet to determine whether it’s a technological weapon or an Inhuman.

Amador’s shoulders dip. Jemma reaches out to comfort her but pulls back when she abruptly sits up.

“Then nothing’s changed.”

That’s … something, Jemma supposes. No news is better than bad news, but then finding out that your main hope of support has no idea you’re even alive would, in most circles, qualify as bad. Things must be exceptionally bad around here.

“Wait,” Jemma says. If Amador has no contact with SHIELD then how… “How did you find me? How did you even know I needed saving?”

Amador doesn’t smile, but her lips thin in what might be an attempt at one. “We saw you on our routine surveillance. Big glass tower. Lots of windows.” She shrugs.

The news is almost a comfort. Not one of the suite’s floor-to-ceiling windows has curtains blocking it. Jemma’s always thought it was a symptom of Hive’s power; there’s no reason to cover up what he doesn’t want seen because no one would dare look. But people _are_ looking. All this time she’s thought herself utterly alone in Hive’s clutches and she wasn’t nearly as alone as she thought.

“Well thank you,” she says. “If I’d known a rescue was waiting, I’d have gone outside sooner.”

She’s tested the bars of her cage slowly, methodically. For all the effort he put into getting her, Hive seemed content to leave her be most of the time. He didn’t demand she work for him or force himself on her the way the others feared he would, he just left her alone, content to take his meals with her and watch her whenever he returned to the suite. It was its own kind of insult, knowing she was nothing more than a doll to him, a thing he cared for only to own it.

But the isolation gave her freedom and she used it to search for weaknesses and ways out. The Inhumans trapped under his sway were never forceful with her, always gently directing her away from areas she shouldn’t enter, and while they suggested she remain close to the building when she dared go all the way down to the lobby, none told her she couldn’t go outside.

It was wonderful, breathing fresh air again. (There was the rooftop garden in the early days of her captivity, but for some reason Hive—or she assumes it was Hive as the message came from his people—barred her from it shortly after her arrival. She still hasn’t determined why.) After only a few minutes’ exploration though, Jemma’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of tires screeching and the force of an impact. One of the guards who left the building with her tackled her to the ground. She remembers a loud noise then and heat, but nothing else until she woke up here.

It’s the best morning she’s had in ages.

Amador ignores her thanks, more concerned with business. “What can you tell us about its operation?”

Jemma swallows, feeling slightly cowed. Not that she’s done anything wrong by focusing on her own questions, but she has work to do now that she’s free. She reports on what she can—after she realized she was allowed to enter the building’s labs without hindrance, she’s ashamed to admit her focus was less on information gathering and more on figuring out how best to sabotage the experiments or to steal equipment she might use to escape—hoping her intel on the building’s weak points will make up for her lack of technical intelligence. Amador absorbs it all, asking few questions along the way. Whether that means it’s new information or simply confirmation of what they already knew, Jemma can’t guess.

“What about it?” she asks once Jemma’s run out of things to say. “Anything you can tell us? Weaknesses? Habits? Anything we can use?”

“He’s dying,” she says. “In early spring we caught a break with a hard drive recovered from one of their old bases. It looks like he’s doing human experiments using his own DNA; we believe trying to prolong his lifespan.”

Amador nods slowly, her focus drifting down while she processes that. “Anything else? Any signs you’ve seen to back that up?”

She shakes her head no. Unfortunately she’s seen no signs at all of deterioration in her time with Hive.

“Are there any drugs it’s taking? Anything we could stop it getting its hands on that might speed things along?”

No and no. If he’s receiving treatments, Jemma hasn’t seen evidence of it.

Amador’s mouth thins again, but this time there’s no hint of a smile at all. “Simmons,” she says seriously, “I need you to think. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

Jemma has enough respect for the woman to take her time answering. Perhaps she’s forgotten something, missed some key bit of information. But nothing springs to mind. “No. I’m sorry. If I think of anything-”

But Amador is already standing. “All right. You sleep on that. I’ll be back in the morning.”

There’s a brief moment in which Jemma is confused and then Amador knocks on the door and fear—silly fear; she knows she’s among allies here—grips her. The heavy metal door opens, revealing a narrow hallway and a brief glimpse of an armed man outside. Then it shuts and metal scrapes on metal as she’s locked in.

She’s trapped.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A pattern develops. In the mornings she’s brought food and water. The guard replaces the bucket in the corner with a new one. He offers her the chance to give up further intelligence—kind of him, she thinks, to make the offer _after_ he’s disposed of her waste. With nothing more to give, she’s forced to deny him and is left alone. Amador comes around midday. She never sits with Jemma again, always stands with arms folded near the far wall. She asks endless questions that Jemma knows are meant to break her, wear her down until she proves herself a liar.

But she isn’t lying, there just isn’t anything else to say.

After that, she’s left alone and shortly after falls asleep so that it can all begin again in the morning.

She tells herself it’s not so bad. At least now she’s among humans. At least now she’s being held captive by her own people instead of a madman who’s slowly conquering the globe. At least now she’s been well and truly captured instead of traded away.

These aren’t much in the way of comfort, but they’re all she has to stop her thinking longingly of a suite of rooms hundreds of feet above the ground.

The only change in the routine comes on the second full day she spends in her tiny cell. After changing out her bucket and being denied his answers, the guard approaches her while removing the knife from his belt. She’s understandably frightened and Amador has to make her appearance early to hold her down while the guard cuts a ragged lock of her hair.

“There,” Amador says while the guard makes a hasty retreat. “Was that so hard?”

Jemma wants to bite out something appropriately sarcastic but is too busy catching her breath and feeling the side of her head, making sure hair is really all he got.

She spends most of the morning trying to calm herself down.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That night she wakes to an explosion. She lies in silence afterward, waiting to hear whether it was only a dream.

Another sound cuts through the night. Not an explosion this time, but a heavy _boom_ that shakes the ground.

Jemma leaps to her feet so that she can do … what? Her door doesn’t even have a window she might see some activity through. She stands impotently, uncertain what to even hope for, for perhaps thirty seconds before the door swings open.

If Amador is surprised to see her awake, she makes no sign of it. She only grabs her hand and drags her out, into a mess of armed men and women who close ranks around them.

Information is relayed, but with no idea of anyone’s name or where they are, Jemma can make little sense of it. She only knows that it’s the Inhumans doing the attacking, and that becomes obvious enough on its own when the crack of uncontained electricity starts following them.

“There!” one of the men yells as blue light throws their shadows ahead.

One man screams out in pain. Gunfire whites out all other noise.

There’s nothing when Jemma turns, nothing but the wounded man and his fellow soldiers with their guns still raised to fight an enemy that isn’t there anymore. Jemma tries to stop, but Amador tugs her painfully onward.

“I can help him,” Jemma says.

Amador’s mouth opens, then falls as that blue light flares again, this time up ahead. A ball of white electricity forms out of nowhere then disappears, leaving behind two figures. One with skin grown grotesquely over where his eyes should be. And the other, Hive.

“Fire!” Amador yells. She releases Jemma to lift her own weapon.

The eyeless Inhuman runs away, the electric ball forming around him again and taking him far from here. Hive remains, absorbing the bullets only so long as it takes the other to disappear. After that he calmly lifts his arms.

Jemma thinks for a moment that he’s breaking apart, decomposing before her very eyes under the onslaught. Skin falls away like dust, revealing muscle and bone beneath. Her heart leaps into her throat at the sight.

Then the screaming starts.

Around her, the soldiers are dying. The dust flowing from Hive burns them, eats away at their flesh until they’re nothing but charred bones. One after another they fall. Their screams seem to last long after the last of them is gone.

“Jemma?”

She flinches when he reaches for her with those hands. Her head strikes the wall. She has no memory of cowering in a doorway but that’s where she’s ended up.

“I would never hurt you, Jemma, and I swear to you no one will harm you again.”

True to his word, his arms remain only arms, sliding beneath her and cradling her to his chest. Her hand lands against the soft fabric of his coat, ripped ragged by bullet holes. There’s no blood, no damage at all.

She shivers as he steps out into the cold night air.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He stands at the windows, watching the sun rise over the sea. Slowly the shadows turn to golden light. After so many days in that cell, it’s almost _too_ bright, but she refuses to turn away. He doesn’t look like Ward anymore. He looks like a god.

“You’re not dying,” she says, “are you?”

She’s curled up in the corner seat of one of the softer couches. She’s washed and eaten, changed into new clothes for the first time in days, and left the old where she dropped them with hopes they’ll be burned before she returns.

“No, my Jemma,” he says, his expression gentling when it falls on her. “I am not.”

She twists her fingers more tightly in the blanket she’s wrapped herself in. Disappointment wars with … something. She isn’t sure what, but she refuses to name it.

“You came for me,” she says as he approaches. He moves slowly, like she’s a deer he’s afraid will spook. “Why?”

He brushes her cut hair away from her face. His fingers are soft, his calluses gone. “Because you are mine,” he says simply, no challenge or possessiveness in it at all. It’s a statement of fact to him, nothing more. “And because there is a part of me that loves you more dearly than sunlight. The thought of you coming to harm…” His mouth twists and his eyes darken. His touch grows hard, but she isn’t afraid.

That should probably scare her.

“I keep my promises,” he says, “you will not be harmed again.”

That should scare her too, the amount of control such a promise will mean he’ll exert over not only her but the world around her.

She’s been frightened plenty lately. Right now she wants to enjoy a little security, even if it does come in the form of a gilded cage and a monstrous jailer. She leans into his touch, lets her eyes drift shut and her mind fall into the comfort of interrupted sleep.

He doesn’t say another word, just takes a seat beside her and pulls her against him, offering his shoulder up as a pillow.

 


End file.
